Web Site Marketing Group




Check Your Site Operations "A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history - with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila." -Mitch Ratliffe Online Tools to Test Web Site Performance: Is your site fast enough? The typical visitor is a dial-up user who will not wait more than 10 seconds for a page to load. Users who don't find what they want the first visit, frequently never come back and a significant number will go directly to a competitor. Your business may depend on your web site's speed. Speed is not the only issue. Does site copy include spelling errors? Is the HTML properly constructed? Are there any errors in coding that could cause problems? W3C HTML Validation Service http://validator.w3.org/ A free service that checks documents like HTML and XHTML for conformance to W3C Recommendations and other standards. You can also check your Cascading Style Sheets using W3C's CSS Validation Service. Dr. Watson http://watson.addy.com/ Analyze HTML syntax, verify regular links, verify image links, generate word counts, spell-check non-HTML text and compute estimated download speeds. NetMechanic http://www.netmechanic.com/ Fix HTML code errors, find browser display problems, optimize graphics for fast download and more. Some features require a subscription. Calculate Download Time http://www.kolias.com/computers/downloadtime.htm A calculator that tells you how fast a file will download depending on your connection speed. Webpage Size Checker http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/page_size.cgi Is your site too big to load quickly? If a page doesn't load in 8 seconds, you could lose 1/3 of your visitors. Here's a tool from PHD Software Systems that checks page size. Check Your Cacheability http://www.web-caching.com/cacheability.html Does new site content really make it to your visitors? Some visitors could have an older version of your site's pages stored in cache, on their hard drive. Use this application to check your site's cacheability. Screen Size Tester http://www.dotfactor.com/tools/develop/htmlscreensizetester.shtml This tool from DotFactor.com allows you to check to see if your site can be viewed correctly in at different screen resolutions. Many designers recommend that at a minimum, web sites should work with at least 800 x 600 to 1024 x 768 screen resolutions, without the need for horizontal scrolling. Bobby WorldWide http://bobby.watchfire.com Can users with disabilities access the web site information? Do text-to-speech applications work? Can the site be navigated with only the keyboard? Bobby WorldWide is a tool for Web page authors. It helps identify changes to pages so users with disabilities can more easily use them. Sam Spade http://www.samspade.org Sam Spade is a hard-boiled Film-Noir detective in Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon. SamSpade.org offers tools that reveal web site data clues, including Traceroute (a network diagnostic tool that maps out the path an IP packet takes from the source system to the destination system) and Reverse DNS (which checks the reverse DNS for the 256 addresses surrounding the one you're looking at and checks for forged and bogus reverse DNS). Check DNS http://www.DNSstuff.com Numerous DNS tools, including DNS lookup, Reverse DNS lookup, DNS timing, Ping and more.